How do you move the needle and *actually* sell books?

The answer will surprise (and depress) you

Back in March I learned the Assassins Anonymous paperback would be the June mystery and thriller pick at Barnes & Noble.

That’s at every single Barnes & Noble.

According to Google there are 667 locations in the U.S. The chain ordered a ton of copies, and they’ll be displaying the book on tables, in promotions, on social media, etc.

Yesterday I hit the pavement and signed stocked at their Union Square, Fifth Avenue, Upper West Side, and Upper East Side locations in Manhattan. I also dropped into the Atlantic Avenue location in Brooklyn, as well as the Staten Island store.

(So if you want a signed copy, that’s where you can find them.)

This is a coup. Assassins sold pretty well, but this is going to move an enormous amount of copies, and, even better, the sequel, The Medusa Protocol, comes out at the end of June. The timing could not be more perfect.

As I traversed the city yesterday with my trusty Sharpie and a bag of Baked by Melissa cupcakes for the booksellers, it was not lost on me how lucky I am.

Authors are constantly trying to move the needle on sales. Social media, conferences, signing and speaking opportunities…

The harsh truth is that these things… don’t really do that much.

Social media doesn’t sell books. I’ve done plenty of events where selling a handful of copies is a success. This is very much a game of inches.

But then something like this happens.

It’s part luck. A couple of author pals asked me how I managed to land this and the answer is, truly, I don’t know. Some sales reps read it, they liked it, they recommended it, and the book somehow got anointed by the bookselling gods.

If you really want to sell books? Get picked for a promotion like this, or a high-profile book club, like Oprah’s. Or the movie/TV show gets fast-tracked and actually made. Or the major media outlets just up and decide that your book is the one they’re going to incessantly cover.

Basically, all things you can’t control.

I do want to dispel a myth—some folks will say that it’s the publishers who decide which books get covered and which don’t. That they manufacture bestsellers while leaving other books out in the cold.

That’s not entirely true. Yes, there are books that get more marketing than others. Yes, sometimes they’ll shift resources to something that feels like a “sure thing”, and that sometimes means less resources for a book that isn’t tracking as well.

But Crown put an enormous amount of resources behind The Warehouse, which got the red carpet treatment in terms of book promotion: tons of major media, airport bookstore buys, TV interviews.

And that book didn’t sell close to expectations. All the right things happened—it just didn’t make that final imperceptible leap into connecting with readers on a large-enough scale.

And that’s why selling book is a mysterious and terrifying endeavor. You never know what’s going to work. Someone catches lightning in a bottle, and the best thing anyone can do is go out and buy a bottle. You can’t make lightning strike. You just show up and do what you can, hoping that the right pieces fall into the right places. It’s like playing Tetris with a blindfold on.

Meanwhile, we’re all out here begging for attention in an oversaturated marketplace.

I don’t mean this to be discouraging. Luck happens with preparation meets opportunity. The fact that I kept writing and kept showing up meant I was in the right position for this to happen. It reinforces the thing I keep telling people: the shared trait amongst successful authors is perseverance… and a fair bit of stubbornness.

Will this change my stars? Who knows. I do know I’ll sell a lot of copies of Assassins, and likely more copies of The Medusa Protocol than I would have otherwise sold. Which is a relief, because Medusa has made a few of those “hot summer reads” lists… but not a lot of them.

It’s a sequel, and sequels are hard.

Anyway. Go out and get a copy. Tell a friend about it. I’m going to hustle as hard as I can, to make the most of this.

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UPCOMING EVENTS:

TUESDAY, JUNE 17: I’ll be on Barnes & Noble’s Midday Mystery podcast with my pal S.A. Cosby. We’ll talk about The Medusa Protocol, and his new book, King of Ashes. More info and RSVP here. You can submit questions for us to answer! Have fun with that.

SUNDAY, JUNE 22: I’ll be hanging out at the Staten Island Barnes & Noble, signing The Medusa Protocol (or whatever else you want me to sign) starting at 1 p.m.

MONDAY, JUNE 23: The official release party for The Medusa Protocol is at P&T Knitwear. I’ll be joined by my good friend Alex Segura. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and you can RSVP here. Please do that if you plan to attend!